Authors: Jody Wallace
“I work here part time.”
Interesting. If he was employed here, he had to be a witch. He’d be knowledgeable about the shop’s inventory.
He stepped closer to her. He was at least six foot five. Katie hadn’t masked her height or build—that was way too hard—and he towered over her in a different way than Marcus did. The kid, all gawky arms and legs, seemed more like he was going to trip over her.
She stared up at him through her lashes. He reminded her of somebody. The way he carried himself, the shape of his head. Based on her instinctive response, it was someone she hadn’t liked.
Goddess, there was no telling. She had a terrible memory for the faces of people she’d encountered—especially wolves she’d dealt with. Tonya was the one who never forgot a chi.
This guy was just some witch kid who liked girls and fast cars. Neither was a crime. Marcus was right. Katie was suspicious of everything and everybody. Her trust-o-meter was completely busted.
Instead of looking for treachery behind every outdoor statuette, she should take advantage of the fact the young man was flirting with her. This might be her best shot at getting the monkshood discreetly.
“You work here?” she said. “Awesome. Can you show me where the bathroom is?”
His eyebrows wagged, and he smiled. He seemed thrilled to be asked. Maybe she’d made her mask too pretty. “Since you asked so nice. Come with me.”
She followed him toward Harry and June. Since she’d been talking, Harry would know she was inside the building anyway.
She smiled as she traipsed past the wolf. “Hi, Grandpa. Going to the potty.”
“We’re ready to leave.” Harry glared at the young man, and his lip curled like Clint Eastwood. It was a refreshing change to have his ire focused on someone besides herself. “Can’t you hold it until the next stop?”
“Nope.” She hopped from foot to foot, like a child. “Supersized slushie.”
The lady in the red apron rang June up at the register. Because of the specialized purchases, that lady would know Katie, June and Harry were witches. The boy’s attention snagged on June’s items.
Now the boy would know too. Did that matter? He shambled over to the counter.
“Hi, Adele. Busy day?”
“You’re not scheduled to start your shift until five.” The lady counted out June’s change. They’d paid in cash, as many witches did. Witch businesses preferred that for their less public transactions. Tax officials might wonder why people bought cayenne and kava and such in bulk—and at such exorbitant prices.
Not to mention many witch transactions occurred as barters. Tonya had netted them a lifetime supply of ginseng for one permabrand.
“What are you buying?” the kid asked June. “Anything cool?”
The lady at the cash register tsked him. Her tag identified her as a store manager. “Frank, I’ve told you before, it’s none of your business what our customers purchase.”
He shrugged. “Just curious.” He gestured for Katie. “Adele, I’m showing her where the bathroom is.”
One didn’t ask another witch’s age. One didn’t ask another witch’s recipes or purchases. Was Frank a socially awkward witch teen? Or something else?
June and Harry watched Katie follow the kid toward the back of the store, concern written on their fake elderly faces.
“Since you’re here, you can finish weeding the seasonal beds,” the manager called after Frank.
He huffed in a very authentic fashion. “Whatever.”
“My name’s Sherrie,” she told Frank. “Your manager seems like a hard-ass.”
“She’s all right.” After he unlocked a set of heavy double doors, they passed into a well-organized back room where Katie recognized many of the simples and supplies. It was alphabetically arranged. A witch’s dream.
No time to drool. She scanned for the
M
section. They appeared to be on the opposite side of the first row. There was a single door marked Restroom. Beside it was a rolling bucket with a mop. A quick inspection didn’t reveal any cameras.
Frank jerked his thumb toward the door. “There you go. I’ll wait out here for you.”
She stalled for time. She was out of sight of Harry and June. Could she wrangle her supplies from Frank…or steal them?
“Your car is hot.” She wandered through the room as if the bathroom had been an excuse to get him alone. Which it had. She approached the desired section and tried to act blasé. “How fast does it go?”
He leaned against a shelving unit and crossed his arms. “I’ve had it up to one-thirty.”
Katie faked awe. “What about the cops?”
He laughed. “Come on. You know we can handle cops. And a lot of other problems too,” he added with a smug grin.
“Um.” She strolled along the shelf. Marjoram. Milk thistle. Moss, reindeer. Damn, where was monkshood? “I don’t, um, have it yet.”
Growing into one’s magic occurred anywhere from the age of fourteen until early twenties. At sixteen, it wouldn’t be unusual for a witch to be a juvenile.
“I do,” he bragged, goggling at her tits. “I’m older than I look.”
“I bet you are.” Despite the missing bin on the
M
shelf, she knew for a fact this place had monkshood. It wasn’t advertised, but she knew. “Why do you ask what people are buying?”
Frank cut his gaze to the floor. “I want to own my own store eventually. Of course I want to know what people buy.”
“Do you have any—you know—contraband stuff?” she asked conspiratorially.
He fondled his chin. “Like pot?”
“Like high octane nutmeg.” The herb, very different from the human seasoning, was used in a few spells for lust and intoxication. Tonya said all the witch kids these days tried to get high on it.
The kid swaggered down the row, toward her. “I could be convinced to find some nutmeg, I guess. For the right price.”
When he had his back to her, Katie checked out the
W
herbs on a hunch. Shoved behind the witch hazel was a small, clear container labeled Wolfsbane, a colloquial name for monkshood.
It didn’t have dust on it. It was graduated to the ounce and appeared to be nearly empty.
“What about something harsh, like monkshood?”
Frank froze.
She froze too.
He turned slowly, his posture wary. It was a definite shift—not her imagination and not her broken, untrusting nature. “Monkshood? That shit can kill you.” He glowered at her, looking much older and harder than his—was it a façade? “What do you want it for?”
Katie’s thumb brushed her poppy sachet in her front pocket. “I don’t know. Because it’s cool?”
He marched toward her, his lanky limbs like a walking scarecrow. A scarecrow from a horror movie. “Are you going to use it?”
She wrinkled her nose, but at the same time broke open the poppy with her thumbnail. “Duh. I don’t want to die. Suspicious much?”
He pulled out a packet, and Katie’s heart plummeted to her shoes.
It wasn’t just a packet. It was a spell pod, like the keepers used.
“What’s your real name?” he demanded, ditching the teenage-boy act. This was no child.
Neither was she. “I told you already. Sherrie. Are you some kind of old man? Pervert. I’m sixteen.”
In lieu of a response, he hurled the pod. She was ready. She collapsed onto the floor. The pod flew overhead, and she had the guy by the knees, toppling him backward, before he knew what had whammied him.
Nobody ever expected the short, cute female with glasses to fight like a cornered honey badger. Katie kneed the guy in the groin, disabled him of another pod and pressed her knife to his jugular before he could scrabble in his pocket for more.
Whoever he was, he was no match for her. For Chang Cai. “Who do you work for?”
He grinned. He had crazy eyes. No mask could hide those. “I work here.”
When he tried to squirm his hand into his pocket, she sliced him enough that he started bleeding. “Hands above your head, Frank. I can stick my knife in a lot of places if I use heal-all, you know. You won’t die fast.”
He blinked, taken aback by her matter-of-fact menace. He also raised his arms. “You’re lying about your age.”
“Yeah. I also think your car’s a piece of shit.” His blood would need to be mopped off the floor to hide what had happened. Better not cut him too deep. “What did you throw at me?”
“Maybe it was monkshood. It’s so cool, right?” He laughed. His large front teeth reminded her of a rabbit, but his crazy eyes reminded her of…
Who? Dammit, who?
“What the hell is going on?” hissed an angry voice.
Harry and June, laden by their purchases, had entered the storeroom—luckily without Adele the manager. Perhaps she was helping other customers?
“First shelf. Under the ginkgo” Katie ordered. “What kind of spell pod is it?”
Keepers weren’t the only witches to grasp the usefulness of projectile spell components, but they utilized them more aggressively than the covens. The pod alone wasn’t enough to condemn this guy.
Harry growled at her command. June huffed. Katie had added alpha to her not-so-polite request, and she hadn’t done it on purpose. It came naturally.
She didn’t have time for other alphas, dammit. “Shut up and do it. Be quick.”
Muttering imprecations, Harry poked under the stock shelving until he freed a small, bullet-shaped packet of herbs.
“Be careful with it. Breaks on impact. Might be primed.” She didn’t care that her knowledge was giving Frank clues about her, because she was going to memory wipe his scrawny ass in about three minutes. “Sniff it and tell me what it is.”
Frank tried to twist out of her grasp, and she pushed the blade deeper into his neck. He cursed. The blood flow from the wound increased from a dribble to a stream.
“I don’t know what the hell it is,” Harry said. “It’s green stuff. Doesn’t smell like it goes in pie. Uh, honey?”
At least he had the sense not to use June’s name. Packages rustled as June accepted the spell pod gingerly. “Hops and valerian. But there’s more.”
“Is it thyme?”
“I think so, yes.”
Katie grunted. That confirmed it. Only keepers added thyme to their sleep spells. This guy, somehow, was a keeper.
She had to wipe him. Or kill him. Before Adele got curious about how long her customers were in the bathroom. Before he reported to Lars. Then they had to get the hell out of here.
“Are you…is he bleeding?” June asked. “Why are you hurting him?”
“He likely threatened her in some way,” said a new voice.
Goddess be damned. Marcus. Well, it had been nine whole minutes. He’d given her five. Generous.
With two wolves prowling through the stock room and Katie riled up, Frank stood zero chance of getting away as long as she could keep him from any spell casting. She jumped up and took the pod from June, who handed it over with a judgmental sniff.
“Make sure nobody comes in here,” Katie told the others. “Tell them the bathroom’s in use. This shouldn’t take long.”
Frank sat up resentfully and palmed his neck. Blood escaped, spattering his shirt and jeans. “Daft bitch,” he cursed. “I’m going to bleed to death.”
He was beginning to look pasty. She refused to let herself care. If he reported them, if the keepers figured out who, exactly, had been in Kentucky hunting down monkshood, it could ruin everything.
It could ruin everything…again.
“Don’t be a crybaby.” She kicked his leg, hard, wishing she had her steel-toed work boots instead of tennis shoes. “You can’t afford that car on a part-time clerk’s salary. Who else do you work for?”
“I’m not telling you anything.” He tugged up his shirt and squashed it to his neck.
“Is Lars in town?” She flicked the knife so the guy’s own blood dripped on his pants. “Is he on his way here? Does he have an old Chinese man with him?”
“I don’t know anybody named Lars, and I don’t know anybody Chinese. Who do
you
work for, sneaking around, trying to get your hands on wolfsbane?”
“Why do you need that?” Marcus asked.
To hell with this. Katie grabbed the monkshood off the shelf before anybody could stop her.
“You’ve got two choices, Frank.” She flipped up the hinged lid of the small container. “Tell me where Lars is and I’ll use your spell pod on you and maybe a little heal-all so you won’t actually bleed to death. You’re starting to look peaky.”
His eyes shifted to the right and the left, as if seeking other choices. Answers. A way to escape. “And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t, I use the monkshood.”
June gasped.
Frank’s eyes widened. “You can’t use that. It would kill you too.”
Odd. If he used keeper pods but thought monkshood would kill her…was he not a keeper himself?
“You sure about that?”
“Shit,” he moaned. “You’re one of them?”
“I’m one of them,” she agreed, though she hadn’t been in a long, long time.
“Look, lady, it’s not easy to make ends meet in this economy. I’m supposed to tell him if anyone buys specific supplies. Wolfsbane. He issued a code red recently, so I’m putting in extra hours. I thought I…I thought if I could knock you out and keep you for him, he’d be proud of me.”
“Company’s coming,” Harry said, his head cocked to the side. “I know you’re enjoying yourself, but can you wrap up torture time?”
Katie narrowed her eyes. The others would never let her kidnap Frank to get answers, despite Marcus’s propensity for it. She had about fifteen seconds before they had to split. “Is your boss named Lars or not? Does he look…”
Does he look like you, except two lifetimes older?
That’s why she hated this kid, this man, for no reason. He looked like Lars. He looked eerily and terribly like Lars. Did the old psycho force his spies to wear his face?
“I don’t know, okay? I’ve never heard of Lars. He makes us call him Sire. I don’t know what he looks like.”
“What else can you tell me? Come on, Frank.” She shook the monkshood. “Don’t make me use this. It gives me indigestion.”
“He’s got a network. People in herb shops and witch establishments. I only know my immediate supervisor.”
Her blood ran cold. While the elders had been assuming the keepers had lost their proficiency, Hiram Lars had been infiltrating the entire coven network. Was the council the only organization he intended to take over?